Probe Of Body Found In Car Trunk Leads To Troubled Indiana Church

September 29, 1991|By Colin McMahon and John O`Brien, Chicago Tribune.

ELKHART, IND. — When police in the northwest Chicago suburb of Des Plaines found a badly burned body in a torched car last week, several possibilities came to mind.

Maybe it was a mob hit, or perhaps the work of a Chicago street gang. Maybe, police speculated early on, it was the violent end to a drug deal gone bad.

Any of those initial hypotheses seemed far more likely than the eventual reality:

The charred corpse in the trunk was that of Elmer Denlinger, a 63-year-old Elkhart chiropractor who was a leader in a shadowy church known more for its fights with the federal government than its devotion to a higher power.

Police could not say for sure why the killers picked Des Plaines, about 150 miles away from Elkhart, to dispose of Denlinger`s body. But then, that was only one of many strange aspects of the case.

The victim, for starters, was plain odd in the view of some people acquainted with him.

They said Denlinger, who was known as ``Doc`` to his friends even though he was not an M.D., experimented with exotic herbs and dozens of medicines, always seeking cures for a variety of ailments.

After his mother died several years ago, he dressed her in nightclothes and kept her body in the house near an open window for several days, said David Keck, a former Elkhart police lieutenant.

Keck said police investigated Denlinger`s mother`s death at the request of medical authorities who suspected she died of neglect, but no criminal charges were filed.

Denlinger`s religious fervor also raised eyebrows. He regularly set a place at the family dinner table ``for Jesus.`` And the church he belonged to was far from mainstream.

Denlinger`s unlikely death cast a public spotlight on that organization, the Christian Church of St. Matthew, a spotlight so harsh it led most members of the church to drop out.

``Locally, the church will not survive,`` its pastor, George Miller, said Friday. ``Our dream of getting a new building here in Elkhart and starting a new congregation is shot.``

Miller admitted his group was never that strong to begin with, a half-dozen families who he says were joined by the idea that, ``Our goal in life is to help other people.``

Part of the church`s problem has been that the Internal Revenue Service doesn`t agree with Miller about the church`s goal, alleging that the group is little more than an elaborate tax dodge.

And the church has been dogged by rumors that it or some of its members may have links to white supremacist groups.

Only three months ago, a federal judge in South Bend sided with the IRS in its efforts to seize Denlinger`s house, which had been in his family since 1939 but which he claimed had been given to the church.

Denlinger, shaken by the loss of his home, was evicted and ended up moving into a back room at his office, Wholistic Health and Rehabilitation Center.

Police say Denlinger was killed sometime last Sunday in the back room of his office, shot at least five times with a small-caliber handgun.

Investigators say they have no evidence to indicate Denlinger was killed because of his role as financial secretary of the church. But they are seeking for questioning two men affiliated with the Order of St. Matthew, a subset of the church that Miller likens to a monks` order in the Catholic Church.

And police are examining documents from the church, hoping to find out whether Denlinger`s death was a personal attack or something deeper.

Those documents were obtained Wednesday when police, acting on a tip, found a secret room in a house belonging to William Gene Voelker, 48, a trustee of the order and one of the men police are seeking.

Besides the documents, which Miller said filled two file cabinets and two large boxes, police also found a cache of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Howard Washburn, another member of the order, told police that Voelker called him Tuesday afternoon and admitted killing Denlinger, said Elkhart Lt. Rollie Tuttle.

In the conversation, lasting no more than 30 seconds, Voelker told Washburn that he ``was sick and tired of the way Denlinger was running the church`` and that he suspected Denlinger of stealing money, Tuttle said.

``If Bill did do it, he wasn`t in his right mind,`` Miller said. ``Maybe it`s the medication he`s on. It changes his personality 180 degrees.``

Miller defended Denlinger`s handling of church affairs, saying any improprieties Voelker may have perceived were all in his mind. And he blamed the order`s recent troubles partly on the IRS, which has filed tax liens against nearly everyone involved with the group, including Voelker, Washburn and Miller.

Those belonging to the order could, if they wished, take a vow of poverty and donate all their wordly goods and any money they earn to the group, which in return provided them living expenses.

Denlinger, for example, tried to donate not only his home but also his business. Miller, who drives a Lincoln Town Car complete with a cellular phone, chose not to, he said.